How to Play Hearts: Rules, Passing, and Scoring

Learning how to play hearts starts with four players, no partnerships, and a shared goal nobody wants out loud: take as few points as possible. Deal out the entire 52-card deck, thirteen cards to each player, then pass three cards before anyone sees a trick played - the direction of that pass changes from hand to hand and is one of the game’s few fixed rituals. From there it’s an ordinary trick-taking game with one twist: every heart you end up holding at the end of a trick costs you a point, and the queen of spades alone costs thirteen. This page covers standard four-player hearts played to 100 points, the version most apps and home tables mean by hearts rules, and calls out the common house and tournament variations as they come up.

Hearts rules: how to play hearts in a nutshell

This hub describes standard four-player hearts: a 13-card deal, a four-hand passing cycle (left, right, across, then a hand with no pass at all), no point cards allowed on the first trick, and a 100-point target where the lowest cumulative score wins - the setup most casual tables, apps, and introductions to how to play hearts default to. Where a specific club, long-standing house habit, or tournament rule set changes one of those details, that’s flagged in context below rather than presented as the only way to play.

Setup and the deal

Four players each take a seat; unlike spades or euchre, nobody is paired with a partner, and every player scores strictly for themselves. Shuffle a standard 52-card deck with no jokers and deal it out one card at a time, clockwise, starting with the player to the dealer’s left, until all fifty-two cards are gone and everyone holds thirteen. The deal rotates clockwise hand after hand, so every player takes a turn as dealer.

The diagram below shows the seating: four players sit evenly spaced with no fixed partnerships, and the deal itself moves clockwise around the table from whoever is dealing.

Before anyone plays a card, every player picks three cards from their own hand and passes them, face down, to another player, then picks up the three cards passed to them. The direction of that pass depends on which hand of the game you’re on, and it’s the one piece of hearts rules that’s easy to forget mid-session:

Hand number	Pass direction
1	Pass three cards to the player on your left
2	Pass three cards to the player on your right
3	Pass three cards to the player across from you
4	Hold your hand - no pass this round

After the fourth hand, the cycle repeats starting again with a pass to the left. Some tables shorten this to a three-hand cycle and skip the hold entirely; if your group plays that way, say so before the first hand, since it changes how far in advance you can plan around a card you’re trying to get rid of.

Three-player games remove the two of diamonds before the deal so the fifty-one remaining cards split evenly into seventeen-card hands; five-player games instead remove both the two of clubs and the two of diamonds, leaving fifty cards for ten-card hands. The passing pattern and trick play are otherwise unchanged.

How a turn works

Whoever ends up holding the two of clubs after the pass leads the first trick, and they must lead with it - it’s the forced opening card in the game. The one exception is the five-player variant above, where the two of clubs has already been removed from the deck; there, the three of clubs leads instead. Going clockwise, each other player must follow suit if they’re able to; a player with no card in the suit led may discard any card from their hand instead, including a heart or the queen of spades. Whoever plays the highest card of the suit led wins the trick and leads the next one.

Two restrictions shape the early play. First, no point card - no heart, and not the queen of spades - may be played on the very first trick of a hand, even by a player who has nothing else to follow suit with; they must find a non-point card if one exists in their hand. Some house games relax this and allow “first-trick blood,” letting a player with no clubs at all drop a heart or the queen on the opening trick - if your table plays that way, it’s worth agreeing on before the deal.

Second, hearts can’t be led to any trick until a heart has already been played and taken on an earlier trick, a moment called “breaking hearts.” In the standard rules used on this page, only a heart itself breaks hearts - playing the queen of spades does not count, even though it’s worth more points than any heart. A number of house variants treat the queen of spades as breaking hearts too, since it’s a point card; check with your table if a hand opens oddly fast with hearts led.

Scoring

At the end of each hand, every player counts the point cards they took in tricks: each of the thirteen hearts is worth one point, and the queen of spades is worth thirteen on her own, for twenty-six points in play every single hand. Add those points to each player’s running total; there is no bonus for winning the most tricks by itself, only for avoiding point cards.

Shooting the moon is the hand’s one genuine swing play: if a single player takes all twenty-six points - every heart and the queen of spades - in one hand, the standard scoring on this page flips the result. Instead of charging that player twenty-six points, they score zero for the hand, and each of the other three players is charged twenty-six points instead, a eighteen-point swing in the shooter’s favor compared to taking none of it. A common alternate scoring option, used at some tables, instead subtracts twenty-six from the shooter’s own total rather than adding twenty-six to everyone else’s; the two approaches move a shooter’s own score the same amount, but the alternate version doesn’t touch the other three players’ totals, which changes the strategy of trying to stop a moon shot. Agree on which version you’re using before the game starts.

A less common variant worth knowing by name even though it’s not part of standard play here: in Omnibus Hearts, the jack of diamonds is worth -10 points to whoever takes it, which can turn a near-moon into a much bigger swing, or give the table a second card worth fighting over besides the queen of spades.

How the game ends

A hand ends the instant all thirteen tricks are played; score it as above, then the deal passes to the next player clockwise and a new hand begins with the next passing direction in the cycle. The game itself ends as soon as any player’s cumulative score reaches 100 points - the hand being scored is always finished in full first, even if that pushes two or more players past 100 at once. Whoever has the lowest total once the triggering hand is fully scored wins the game; a tie for lowest is unusual but, if it happens, most tables just play another hand to break it.

Common variations and house rules

The rules above describe the common four-player game, but several details change from table to table, app to app, or tournament to tournament:

• First-trick blood. Some house games allow a player with no clubs at all to play a heart or the queen of spades on the very first trick instead of being forced to find a safe card; the standard rules on this page do not allow it.
• The jack of diamonds. Not a scoring card in standard hearts, but Omnibus Hearts and a few other named variants make it worth -10 points to whoever takes it, on top of the usual hearts-and-queen scoring.
• Does the queen of spades break hearts? Standard rules say only a played heart breaks hearts; a common house variant also treats the queen of spades as breaking hearts, since it’s worth more points than any of them.
• Passing cycle length. The four-hand cycle here (left, right, across, hold) is standard, but plenty of casual groups play a shorter three-hand cycle - left, right, across - with no hold hand at all.
• Shooting the moon’s payout. The standard scoring on this page charges 26 points to each of the other three players; the alternate version instead subtracts 26 from the shooter’s own score and leaves everyone else untouched.

If you like hearts’ point-avoidance tension but want a partner to share it with, spades keeps the trick-taking and the breaking-suit convention but turns it into a bidding game played in fixed partnerships. And if the three-card pass is the part you enjoy most, gin rummy is built entirely around deciding what to keep and what to let go of, hand after hand.